His traps could be bigger.

Friday Failboat 1

Hey guys, Brent here, welcome to the first Friday Failboat, where I share with you a story about one of my life’s failures. Today’s failure is the story of how I talked with a girl every day on the phone for two weeks and then abruptly stopped calling her.

But first, a poll.

Do you care about Kelly Starrett's idiosyncratic language?

No, because I'm not a fucking piece of shit.

Yes, because I'm spar. Kelly Starrett sounds like he's selling something and to be quite honest he just takes something simple and over-complicates things. It's just a deadlift.

I don't mob because I don't care about the possibility of improving my movement. And that's fine. Some people don't use condoms because they don't care about the possibility of HIV.

So in high school I went to my JROTC banquet with a chick in ROTC. She asked me so I went, I didn’t really talk to her and didn’t know what it meant to go to a banquet with a girl. So I go there wearing the greens and all that bullshit and we have dinner and I dance with her. THEN. THEN. THEN. I see this chick there wearing some punk rock black dress and striped socks and a lip ring. She was a classmate’s friend, not date. I ask him who she is and he introduces us and pushes us to dance together. We’re both real shy but I think mutually interested? She seemed to enjoy dancing with me but we didn’t really make a whole lot of eye contact and while she was interested in talking with me we weren’t terribly good at making conversation.

Couldn’t tell you what happened to my date to the JROTC banquet. Probably hated my fucking guts after I ditched her.

I find the cute punk rock chick at lunch a few days later and say, “Hey, I uh it was – I liked dancing with you at the – ”

“I LIKED IT TOO.”

” – I liked dancing with you at the banquet and I was uh I was wondering – ”

“Yeah?”

” – I was wondering if you maybe wanted to uh give me your number?”

“Sure, yeah.”

So I get this chick’s number. My friends counsel me and tell me, don’t call her right away. Wait two days. Make her wonder. So I wait two days and it feels like I’m on a fucking countdown to a catastrophic event. I’m pretty stressed about it. I haven’t talked on the phone with a girl before. Is this what being a man feels like?

On Thursday I call her and the conversation could not be more awkward. BRB long periods of silences BRB what’s your favorite movie BRB well I gotta go but I liked talking with you so ttyl?

This continues more or less everyday for a week or two. She never called me. I was always calling her. Probably every day. I probably called her more than once when she didn’t pick up. … Probably left a few voicemails. She seemed OK with it? This was back before cellphones by the way. So I was leaving voicemails on her family’s answering machine hey it’s Brent just wanted to call and talk, call me back.

She was an artist (she drew anime, be still my heart).

One fateful day I call her and we have a typical awkward conversation where we hear each other breathing because we’re both on the verge of having anxiety attacks. I’ve compeletely run out of things to say. Desperate to say something I ask, so what’s your dream house?

“… my dream house?”

“Yeah like, do you have an idea of the house you’d like to live in when you’ve got a grown up job and stuff?” But I already know the damage has been done. There’s no coming back from this. There’s awkward and then there’s moderately high on the autism spectrum. And then there’s me. Setting world records on the autism scale.

I consult with my friends about this devastating operational failure. They agree that this is a failed mission. I’m not gonna make it through selection. This is me washing out. Just fucking pack my shit up and don’t apply again. Have fun shoveling shit in regular infantry. Making E-3 might be in my future? At best?

So I never call her again.

Later in college we meet again through a mutual friend (who she is now dating) and she thinks I am the nicest guy.

* * *

The only thing I want to talk about re: training is I pressed the 70lbs dumbbells for 5. That’s literally all I want to share. Fuck everything else.

Last night I worked on tack-and-stretching my anterior hip structures with the PVC pipe, focusing on extension of the hip + internal rotation. Was unpleasant, but seemed beneficial. I’m still trying to improve my hip internal rotation + extension (i.e. split jerk) and the only things I’ve done for the anterior hip are couch stretch and joint approximation with a band. Seems like addressing soft tissue relationships would be a good move for me. I’ve also tried tacking-and-stretching my tris on the PVC pipe and I think I prefer this to using the lacrosse ball now. My IT bands and gastrocs don’t hurt as much to roll on the pipe since I do them pretty regularly. Post your mob progress/experimentation to comments.

Today I walked into the gym wearing my gay attire and a female trainer there who isn’t on anabolic steroids and seems pretty nice happened to be entering at the same time and held the door open for me. She makes eye contact with me and says,

“Hey man I’ve been meaning to ask, do you lift with a team?”

“Oh I uh hrm derherp — I lift on my own but I do compete.” Then without warning I veer into the bathroom (it is right next to the entrance/exit).

I wasn’t trying to avoid conversation. I was fixated on going to the bathroom so I just went into the bathroom.

Neither of us pursued further contact.

I missed some snatches and some dude who is being trained by a guy on steroids says, “HEY MAN THAT’S PRETTY GOOD.” Confusingly, he wasn’t being sarcastic.

Unsure how to respond to positive reinforcement for sucking at lifting I say my typical “thanks…” and pretend to be busy drinking water. BRB can’t feel normal sitting/standing still and have several nervous habits/behavioral patterns to mask that fact.

Later during my clean-and-jerks he says “SO HEY MAN YOU GOING TO THE OLYMPICS OR WHAT?”

“I’m not gonna go to the Olympics but I do like competing.”

“Why aren’t you going to the Olympics?”

“… because I’m not on enough steroids?” <– his trainer loled at this.

Mark writes:

Seeing as you ignored me on facebook, I’ll ask again here.
How do feel about Real Dolls?

I can think of cooler industries to support.

stankrom writes:

glad to see you look like christian fucking bale in the machinist peesus titty fucking christ how much do you weigh?????

Oh look a libertarian history teacher who doesn’t lift commenting on my bodyweight you don’t happen to post on startingstrength.com do you? Tell me about homeownership Pete do you take umbrance with any of the taxes you pay in relation to it?

Derek writes:

Whoa whoa whoa…since when do you have a gf? Is this perhaps VPVG?

For all you know she might be fucking imaginary.

B writes:

what does your gf think of your log and your legion of devoted betas?

She follows it and gets some low-grade entertainment out of it, same as the rest of you guys.

VPVG writes:

heyy brent,
was wonderingg when you are gonna come overr and let me fuckk you with a strapp on like the littlee beta you aree.

live.laugh.love

Legit story, she agreed to do a short video where I interviewed her but we haven’t gotten around to it. It seems like a bad idea so I’ll discuss with her the disadvantages of doing an interview but if she still agrees thisgunbegood.gif.

True story – in highschool I was captain of my JV football team and would page (she was cool enough to have a pager) this girl every day (sometimes more than once) and we would basically have the same conversation you were having with Anime Annie. This went on for like two years. We never dated and rarely talked at school.

I was in JROTC for a semester, everyone was really really weird. And I don’t mean weird in the “oh they’re just different” way, I mean Jason Genova weird. If they wanted to encourage kids to join the military, they would get rid of gayROTC. Luckily only a few of the least weird kids ended up actually enlisting. I know, cool story bro.

Ironic Title is Ironic. Mostly due to the fact you probably wont post another failboat, ever. Its probably better just to call it a day and quit instead of exciting yourself with these “failboat” ambitions; we all know where this is headed. Its like the good damn titanic, brent. Only its not as tragic because not as many people will be freezing and drowning in the Atlantic Ocean. All I can see is fucking icebergs, dooder.

Read through your past few posts; neway how often are u snatching/CnJ’ng? Also not sure but do u already have shirts? These “betas” found some real gold cause just 10 minutes of reading your posts and I already wanna roll you up into a little ball and shove you up my vagina, so-to-speak.

I have brutally and chronically tight anterior hip business. Lying on the floor with the lax ball wedged just below ASIS really helps me get my couch stretch on. Squatting feels legit and pain-free these days.

I don’t have a PVC pipe, and I’m too lazy to drive to the hardware store. But I’ve repurposed my rolling pin (I don’t bake) into a torture device. Rolling out my quads results in a good 6-7 on the pain scale, but my front squats/cleans have never felt better. Yay!

You using any particular technique to roll the quads? I have been using a rolling pin for the same purpose but haven’t found a massive difference in squatting yet though. I still have tight it band though so still a way to go. Also have you tries rolling the calf muscles and achilles tendon and either side above the ankle joint? lots of tight sore stuff there for me at least. Squatting usually feels better for me when I pay attention to ankle tightness. Just random mob thoughts.

I believe we call this particular technique “informed freestyling”, viz., whatever hurts the most. You’ve got to make change, B. Make it hurt. I’ve been focusing on the distal and proximal sections separately because it seems less awkward with the small circumference of the rolling pin. Sometimes I think about how much more it would hurt if I had one of those nice marble ones.

ANYWAY. I usually roll out my IT bands in the same mob session. One side is really tight — tight enough for it to snap/pop a bit when I drop into a squat. I spent some quality time with the rolling pin on it last night. Enough time for it to hurt this morning. But there was a noticeable difference in my squatting today.

I need to work on the calves with this. I sprained an ankle a while ago, and that shit is TIGHT. I’ve been pretending it doesn’t exist, like an engine noise you’re hoping will go away if you ignore it long enough. K-star does not approve.

“…he is a really, really stubborn and contrarian bastard who pretty much does his own thing. He is about as likely to do the exact opposite of what a coach says just for spite as he is to follow any advice.”